High Level Synthesis for Symmetric Key Cryptography

Classification of the major cryptographic functions on the basis of their under-lying basic computational elements yields simplicity and scalability in the design of cryptographic embedded systems. Especially, it benefits their high level synthesis, with performance as good as the hand crafted designs. This chapter discusses the various steps in the HLS tool for block ciphers (called RunFein) and stream ciphers (called RunStream). Several design points in the scope of architectural customizations available to the HLS tool are elaborated. A thorough benchmarking to compare against the hand crafted solutions reveals their performance to be at-par with hand-optimized HDL implementations. The results can be accessed as [1, 2, 3].